<p>We have to go to the food market when we run out of the food.&nbsp; We also have to go to the personnel market while we are searching for a job.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Nowadays, we even need to go to the Dating Market to find a man or a woman.....</p>
<p><img src="http://www.ministryoftofu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/date.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="278" /></p>
<p>A mother displays her son's basic information like age, job, personality and phone number at a blind-date market in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning province,</p>
<p>&ldquo;Thanks&rdquo; to China&rsquo;s stringent <span style="color: #000000;"><a title="family planning" href="http://www.ministryoftofu.com/tag/family-planning/" target="_blank">family planning</a></span> policy to control the population, the marriageable age by law is 22 for males, 20 for females, so the pressure to marry is greatly deferred for most young people, especially those work and live in cities. But family planning, specifically one child policy, has also exacerbated the urgency, as the prospect of being a bachelor looms large for tens of millions of men in surplus as a result of Chinese preference for boys and <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/15636231">gender-selective abortion</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the surfeit of males, single women are equally a good anxiety of their parents, as in male-dominant China, &ldquo;leftover women (<em>sheng n&uuml;</em>,&nbsp;剩女)&rdquo; are a social issue.</p>
<p>Link: http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2011/02/new-custom-of-chinese-new-year-marriage-forcing/</p>
<p><strong>剩女 is not a Social Problem!&nbsp; 剩女 is a Rude Word!</strong></p>

Yeah, this is one of the cultural things I really struggle to grasp. The dating market beside People's Square in Shanghai is huuuuuuuuge. How come guys who are 32 and still single never think about dating a 30 year old woman? Maybe they have more in common.
Way too many people seem to jump into marriages just to be married too.

"Time is important. No one seems understand this sentence better than Chinese!"

Ehhhhhhh. Is that why no one seems to be doing anything about the traffic situation in Beijing? Cos it took me an hour and a half to get to work last week. See also: having to take off half a day to go to the bank.